FERA 12 SemEd Abstracts

Abstracts to the subtheme Significance of Semiotics for Education and the Theory of Education in the theme group Language, Culture and Society in the Philosophy of Education of the FERA Conference in Helsinki 22.-23.11.2012

Subtheme chair Eetu Pikkarainen

1. Eero Tarasti: Education as a Semiotic Challenge
2. Andrew Stables: Semiotics as philosophy for education: from concepts to signs
3. Sébastien Pesce: Semiosis and Embodiment in Teacher Training: an enactive perspective
4. Derek Pigrum: The Transitional Practices of Painters, Fleck’s Notion of ‘Thought Styles’ and Peirce’s Semeiotic Model of Mind: Towards a Semiotic Philosophy of Education
5. Merja Bauters: Semiotic framework into design-based inquiry approaches in education
6. Niclas Sandström: Speech on Difficulty - On the Semiotics of a Self-fulfilling Prophecy
7. Alin Olteanu: Learning the Universe as Argument
8. Eetu Pikkarainen: From Dispositions to Competences: Ontology, Interaction and Semiotics

1 Eero Tarasti: Education as a Semiotic Challenge

Eero Tarasti, University of Helsinki
eero.tarasti_(at)_helsinki.fi

2 Andrew Stables: Semiotics as philosophy for education: from concepts to signs

Andrew Stables
Professor of Education and Philosophy
University of Bath

Abstract

Descartes doubted everything but concluded that there was always an ‘I’ who doubted, thus laying the foundations for modern rationalism. Hume construed mind (‘ideas’) as arising directly from sense impressions, thus laying the foundations for modern empiricism. On these grounds, a strongly dualistic view of education emerges that separates mind from body and, at the theoretical level, ‘concepts’ from ‘data’. Philosophical semiotics, whether drawing principally on the Peircean and pragmatic or the Saussurean, Continental traditions, helps to dissolve this dualism, allowing for a richer empiricism grounded in the realisation that, following Descartes, there is an ‘I’ that survives our doubts, but it is an ‘I’ that experiences rather than merely thinks. Furthermore, that ‘I’ is a never finished project. Education cannot be a matter of stable, rational adults inducting not-yet-adult children into autonomous rationality. Rather, we are all ‘Be(com)ing Human’, and our educational practices, from teaching to research to public policy, should reflect this.

3 Sébastien Pesce: Semiosis and Embodiment in Teacher Training: an enactive perspective

Sébastien Pesce
Université de Cergy-Pontoise – France
Laboratoire EMA (EA 4507) – Ecole, Mutations, Apprentissages

Abstract

In the traditional view, the notion of habit may seem irrelevant to the theory of educational processes. Habit apparently contradicts the reflexive processes one may aim to make possible in educational settings, particularly when encouraging the development of critical thinking and citizenship. Yet, several thinkers have developed a more heuristic perspective of habit in which habit becomes a “general way of being” (Ravaisson), a way of “having a world” (Merleau-Ponty), or a key to understanding couplings between subjects and the world from an enactive perspective (Varela). C. S. Peirce gives habits a central role in pragmaticism by theorizing cognitive processes from a semiotic standpoint when he analyzes the interactions between habits and habits of conduct. With these perspectives, I aim to explore the interplay between habits and semiosic activity in cognitive processes and the progressive embodiment of know-how. In this respect, habits are phenomena through which specific cognitive operations are performed and are forms of intelligent behavior that assume chief importance when conceiving educational processes.

4 Derek Pigrum: The Transitional Practices of Painters, Fleck’s Notion of ‘Thought Styles’ and Peirce’s Semeiotic Model of Mind: Towards a Semiotic Philosophy of Education

Derek Pigrum, University of Bath, 2012
dpigrum_(at)_vis.ac.at

Abstract

This paper is a continuation of my research into expert practices in the arts and their implications for semiotic philosophy of education. A close reading of Peppiatt’s (2012)  interviews with artists 1966-2012 suggests a link to Fleck’s notion of ‘styles of thought’ and to Peirce’s notion of mind that develops our understanding of, for example, the formation of a school of painting such as the London School (Bacon, Kitaj, Kossoff, Freud, Auerbach). In the paper I examine some of the ‘temporal phases’ that the painter’s interviewed experience with a special emphasis on the role of drawing, the ritual like activity prior to the commencement of painting, the semiotic nature of the ‘mark’, the ‘expression event’ and the relation between chance and intentionality. In the paper I draw, among other perspectives, on Peirce’s notion of the indexical sign, Lyotard’s ‘differend’, and Deleuze on Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power as ‘the power to be affected’. The paper outlines a contribution to semiotic philosophy of education in terms of a modified view of intentionality, the importance of different styles of thinking, the promotion of the ‘mood’ of a collective thought style and calls for an increased emphasis on multi -sign use in notebooks and in the dialogic context.

Selected Bibliography

• The Cambridge Companion to Peirce (2004) Misak, C. (ed) Cambride: Cambridge University Press.
• Fleck, l (1979) Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Deleuze, G (1987) Active and Reactive in Friedrich Nietzsche. Harald Bloom (Ed) pp.73-104 New York: Chelsea Press.
• Peppiatt, M (2012) Interviews with Artists 1966 to 2012. New Haven: Yale University Press.

5 Merja Bauters: Semiotic framework into design-based inquiry approaches in education

PhD Merja Bauters,
Senior Lecturer (Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences)
Lecturer (University of Helsinki)
E-mail: bauters_(at)_mappi.helsinki.fi, Merja.bauters_(at)_metropolia.fi
Phone: +358 405532864

Abstract

Educational phenomena are researched from multiple perspectives such as learning, cognition, development, knowledge and epistemic practices, interaction phenomena, contextual interactions and historical sustained processes. Research traditions have tried to create meta-level to structure the plethora of perspectives and methods. Such attempts are for example: cultural psychology, cognitive science, cultural–historical activity theory, and design-based research (e.g., Pea, 1993; Cole, 1996; Wertsch, 1998, Bereiter, 2002). Design-based research has been suggested as a high-level methodological orientation that can be employed within and across various theoretical perspectives and traditions to advance understanding of educational phenomena (Bell, 2004). Design and innovation can be seen as epistemic processes that do not only result in new products or services but also provide insights into the situation they want to change. Attemt is to tackle the terminological and theoretical challenges by using Peirce’s theory of signs. It provides conceptual tools and framework of scientific inquiry taking into account the innovation in the process. The innovation is discussed through Peirce’s concept of abduction, which has been developed further by Paavola (2011) and Bardone (2011). Thus, tying semiotic notions with ideas of distributed and embodied cognition. Concentration is on such concepts as: habits, shared objects, common ground, and affordances.

Selected Bibliography

• Bardone, E. (2011). Seeking Chances: From Biased Rationality to Distributed Cognition. Cognitive Systems Monographs. Vol 13. Springler-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
• Bell, P. (2004). On the Theoretical Breadth of Design-Based Research in Education. Educational Psychologist, 39(4), 243–253.
• Bereiter, C. (2002). Design research for sustained innovation. Cognitive Studies, Bulletin of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society, 9, 321–327.
• Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge,MA: Belknap Press.
• Paavola, S. (2011). Diagrams, Iconicity, and Abductive Discovery. Semiotica 186-1/4, 297–314.
• Pea, R. D. (1993). Practices of distributed intelligence and designs for education. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 47–87). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press.

6 Niclas Sandström: Speech on Difficulty - On the Semiotics of a Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Niclas Sandström, University of Helsinki
niclas.sandstrom_(at)_helsinki.fi

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to discuss and model semiotically how educational classroom discourse used by the teacher applies the concept of difficulty. Difficulty is seen in the present article from the point of view of the teacher introducing a (new) subject matter to the students, and at the same time, using a rather monological way of labeling the new content with a seemingly affective adjective, difficult.

The scope in this presentation is firstly to introduce a new perspective into educational practices and, secondly, to present a semiopedagogic model that can be used to deepen the reflective awareness of speakers, particularly teachers, in different conversational and pedagogical settings.

In introducing a new perspective, our aim is to make use of the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy (as known especially from the writings of Robert Merton) that bears relevance in an array of different conversational and behavioural contexts.

The original premise of this research paper is that experiences of difficulty are at least two-fold: difficulty can be based on 1. the cognitive default setting that something is difficult and requires complex cognitive processes or on 2. the manners and dialectics of speaking and the values and discourses that are underlying. Thus, the present paper focusses on the latter, and the concept put forth, speech on difficulty, is produced discursively. The concept refers also to a manner of speaking that reflects the speaker’s experiences a priori to actual cognitive difficulties that might be found in the listeners.

The point of departure in this article is that manners of speech and discursive practices reflect the utterer’s values, affects and ideologies and that these practices have an impact on the addressee. It is also assumed that manners of speech are also ways of affecting the other parties in the conversation.

As a conclusion, the paper presents a semiotic model whose facets can be used to describe, reflect upon and better understand how certain self-fulfilling prophecies work in educational contexts.

7 Alin Olteanu: Learning the Universe as Argument

Alin Olteanu, University of Bath, Department of Education
ao274_(at)_bath.ac.uk, alin.olteanu87_(at)_gmail.com, 00447532175343

Abstract

Though semiotics is recently gaining more attention from philosophy of education, and the term edusemiotics has penetrated the language of researchers in this field (Danesi, Foreword: Edusemiotics in Semiotics, Education, Experience, 2009) many semiotic concepts that are relevant for the phenomenon of learning are still underexplored within educational studies. Since the sign links different (mental or non-mental) active subjects, as Pikkarainen notices, “the main object of study for semiotics” is the suprasubjectivity (intersubjectivity) of the sign (Pikkarainen, 2010). Thomas Sebeok’s realization that life can be characterized by the fact of its undergoing semiosis is relevant for philosophy of education as it gives an awareness of the fact that interpretation is a matter of adaptation (Gough & Stables, 2008). Signs, such as propositions or arguments, are phenomena to which evolution adapted so that organisms, among which humans most of all, perfected in re-cognizing them. Because of its non-dualist doctrine, semiotics offers a non-trivial perspective on Darwinism that has the potential to divert the theory of evolution from the critique of explaining human life just in genetic, biological terms that lead to racist or sexist beliefs. My investigation argues that, within this semiotic paradigm, the Universe is understood as an argument that can be interpreted by discovery of similarities and the key concept in understanding this, unexplored within philosophy of education yet, is the Peircean concept of Icon.

Keywords: Interpretation, adaptation, sign, Icon, suprasubjectivity

8 Eetu Pikkarainen: From Dispositions to Competences: Ontology, Interaction and Semiotics

Eetu Pikkarainen
PhD, University Lecturer
University of Oulu, Faculty of Education

Abstract

Herbart’s pedagogical theory was based on certain kind of trope theory of ontology. I will start from the “semiotically” interpreted trope theory of CB Martin. According to it every causal event is an interaction event between simple or complex beings in which their existing dispositions may produce manifesting properties. This point of view is radically anti dualistic because that basic level causal interaction has in the simplified forms all the elements of semiotic, meaningful of mental activity of such complex beings likes humans and animals. Although there is a clear and important difference of degree between causal and meaningful relations and between dispositions and competences they are still always connected together and the latter ones are developed on the basis of the former ones. For the theory of education it important to stress that all growth and becoming takes place in action and all action is interaction - with environment and with fellow humans.